


I Am My Mother's Child

by stultiloquent



Series: I Am My Mother's Child [1]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics), Red Hood and the Outlaws (Comics)
Genre: (implied) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bookworm Jason Todd, Child Neglect, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missing Scene, Mrs. Walker (the neighbour featured in ADITF) also gets a heavy cameo in this, Poverty, all that fun stuff that comes with Willis Todd's shitty parenting, and Catherine being an enabler, set after Catherine's death and before Jason starts squatting in a condemned building
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:08:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24181861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stultiloquent/pseuds/stultiloquent
Summary: His mother had been an excellent storyteller, maybe too good - a fact he realised as he got older, as his father came home drunk on his ass more often than not, and the household budget ran far too thin for bath-times to be a justified habit anymore. But Catherine had nothing to offer Jason except for those embellished tales of a man she thought she married once upon a time.
Relationships: Catherine Todd & Jason Todd, Catherine Todd & Jason Todd & Willis Todd
Series: I Am My Mother's Child [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1745308
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	I Am My Mother's Child

**Author's Note:**

> This work is meant to be a prologue to a larger story, but it can be read as a standalone piece about Jason's home life and relationship with Catherine before his time with Bruce and Alfred. So, I'm putting this up before I lose the nerve. Not really betaed, so any and all constructive criticisms are welcome.
> 
> Title is a lyric from Writer in the Dark by Lorde.

Jason held the apartment door open as Mrs. Walker ambled in behind him, large cardboard box cradled against her chest. 

"Here's another crate for the stuff that's going to Goodwill, like I promised," she said as she set the box down with the others by the door, which were already half-filled with miscellaneous items. Most of the boxes were labelled, "For Sale", but there were two boxes with the words, "Jason Todd", written in Jason's own blocky handwriting.

The counsellor had said he could bring that much with him to the state home, at least.

"Thanks again for the help, Mrs. Walker. I know you've got dinner and the kids to tend to," Jason said as he crossed the short distance to the kitchenette, already shrugging off the straps of his schoolbag to drop it against the leg of the dining table. He rummaged through the cupboards for a spare glass that had not yet been packaged away. "Would you like a drink?"

"Water's fine, thank you. And nonsense, my dear. It's all I can do. Your mother--" She cut off, unease written all over her face. It was clear there was more she wanted to say, but thought better of it. 

Mrs. Walker was a plump woman with the sort of kindly face you'd want to trust, who fully believed in the tenet of lending a helping hand to neighbours in need, with a no-nonsense attitude that wouldn't let you say no when she decided you were in need of a helping hand. That was how she entered the lives of Catherine and young Jason Todd. She used to invite Catherine over for tea on the weekends, before she fell ill. Later, Catherine would call her in for last minute babysitting when she had a late shift and needed someone to keep an eye on Jason. He thought of how Mrs. Walker would sometimes wander over to knock on their door when she had surplus cupcakes in the baking tray, and how she must have been the one to find his mother and phone 911 that day, all while Jason sat in class, blissfully ignorant of the harsher truths in life for the very last time.

"I'm sorry," she finally said.

"It's. It's okay."

A heavy silence settled over the pair. Jason turned to the sink so he didn't have to see the look on Mrs. Walker's face, running water into the cup he'd found just to have something to do with his hands. Wordlessly, he handed the water to the woman, and wordlessly, she nodded her thanks and sipped at the water for lack of a direction to keep the conversation alive.

The silence stretched on, until the shrill ring of the hallway landline cut through the sepulchral stillness. They both jerked, jostled out of their respective rumination. 

"Let me get that. You just take your time, alright dear?" She smiled at him reassuringly, and he nodded in turn with a small purse of the lips that fell just short of a smile.

Jason let out a breath as she disappeared out the front door. He waited for the door to click shut properly before he got to work. Fetching a new trash bag from the cupboards, he turned to the scatter of mail on the dining table first, sorting through them with only a cursory glance given to the contents: rent payment notice, utility bill late notice, junk mail, the field trip permission slip he never managed to get a parent signature for, more junk mail - he tossed them all into the trash bag. He paused when he picked up the as-yet-unopened letter from the juvenile authorities, hand wavering as he eyed the almost innocuous-looking DCF emblem.

Outside, the trilling ring of the landline cut off mid-ring, and then Mrs. Walker's muffled voice drifted through the paper thin walls. 

"Oh, yes, Jason's here with me... Tomorrow? Sure, I'll remind him..."

Jason moved further into the apartment, needing to be away from all reminders of his fate if just for a moment. He sauntered over to the living room cabinet, where there would be a TV set if this wasn't a Park Row apartment. Instead, the surface was decorated with a handful of family photos and various odd trinkets he and Catherine picked out from the neighbourhood thrift store on clearance sales days. She had a knack for dressing up the apartment, be that upcycling gift boxes into wall shelves, or hanging Willis's empty bottles up by the window to turn the meagre sunlight reaching this side of the tenement into a kaleidoscope of colours. Every birthday she'd get Jason his one new book for the year, then come December she'd add it to the stack where she would build a Christmas tree out of the paperbacks. Pine trees only lasted a season, but books are forever, she'd impressed that on him. 

One by one he plucked the mismatched bric-a-brac off the cabinet shelf and chucked them into the trash bag. Then he set his sights on the photos, a wandering hand ghosting over the frames as he deliberated on which ones to keep and which ones to lose the frames for the Goodwill pile. He stopped when his attention landed on the family portrait, three smiling faces staring back at him. Jason remembered the day they took that photo - his mother donning a dress she'd only worn twice since, he and Willis both in rental suits that prickled at the cuffs and the collar. Even back then, his face didn't resemble Willis's rugged features at all, but in those matching suits the photographer had cooed at him, called him a handsome little boy and said he took after his father in that regard.

Scoffing, Jason turned the portrait face-down so Willis's beady eyes wouldn't stare at him anymore. He stepped away from the cabinet, trash bag dragging on the floorboards. The contents inside clanked against the tiles when his feet led him into the bathroom.

He had already cleared out most of the items in here - cheap hair dye, aftershave, expired medicine, toiletries whose owners have since fled this apartment and the boy that lived in it. Now there were only the two bottles of body wash and shampoo, their last dredges just enough to last the week, and a solitary rubber duckie resting on the edge of the bathtub. The bright yellow plastic toy stuck out like a weather buoy against bleak seafoam green tiling, an artifact from simpler times, before Jason learnt what disappointment felt like.

He picked up the rubber duck, trash bag sliding out of his grasp in favour of inspecting the bath toy. It was the cheapest thing at the bath section of the Home Depot, but it starred in many a bath-time tale that Catherine would regale Jason with as she shampooed his hair and scrubbed behind his ears. A steamboat, a space shuttle, an anthropomorphic whale - the duck was a stand-in prop for so many things in the stories the mother and son reenacted, the stories Catherine would weave out of nothing but her voice and her words alone. Right here, in this dinky bathtub that felt enormous to Jason back then, he could imagine the infinite world beyond, just waiting for him to go out and see all its wonders and oddities for himself someday. Catherine spoke of all these adventures that Willis embarked on in faraway places when he was still a sea captain, made him seem so much larger than life, and Jason had foolishly hung onto every word.

_"He went down to the Mexico Gulf once. You know, where I showed you on the map?"_

_Jason nodded good-naturedly._

_"There was a pretty nasty storm, the waves were rolling as high as two storeys--" Catherine splashed the water, startling the enraptured little boy-- "And his crew found this small boat that got caught in the storm. By the time they reached it, it was already sinking."_

_"Oh no! Were there any survivors?" Jason grabbed onto the duckie, like he was trying to vicariously keep the boat from the story afloat._

_"The waves were tossing everything around too much, they lost sight of a lot of the overboard passengers. But Willis wouldn't let up on the binoculars. And that's when he spotted it: a baby, lying on one of the broken pieces. It was so tiny, like it was barely 5 months old. But it was still breathing when the crew fished it out of the wreck. It was a miracle."_

Jason would later find out that Willis was more of a two-bit boatsman who ferried unlicensed firearms into the Gotham Harbor for Two Face, sometimes.

His mother had been an excellent storyteller, maybe too good - a fact he realised as he got older, as his father came home drunk on his ass more often than not, and the household budget ran far too thin for bath-times to be a justified habit anymore. There was so little he knew of that man, of the Willis Todd who existed flesh and blood within these four walls, whenever he deigned to show up at the apartment. But Catherine had nothing to offer Jason except for those embellished tales of a man she thought she married once upon a time. When Willis conveniently went MIA on the nights the loan sharks came sniffing around for the fifth time in a row, Jason lost his shit at his mother. Still, towards the end, she kept singing his praises, making excuses for him. Choosing him over Jason.

Willis didn't even show up to the hospital mortuary.

Jason chucked the duck away in disgust. It was just like Willis fucking Todd, to ruin all good things in Jason's life even when he was miles away, rotting in a prison cell or someplace. And now, Catherine would carry Jason's anger to her grave, forever. His eyes burned with hot tears, and he sniffled, rubbing his sleeves against his face roughly to mop away the tears.

He exited the bathroom, marching over to the kitchenette to pour himself a cup of water in the hopes of getting a grip on the riotous anger and grief roiling inside him. There were far too many ghosts in this place, and they clung to his small frame, weighing him down like Atlas at the ends of the Earth.

He took the water in steady gulps, setting the cup down onto the dining table only after he'd managed to calm down his breathing. The strip of sunlight on the hardwood surface shifted; the afternoon was on its last legs, and soon it would be nightfall. His last night in this apartment.

Jason glanced over at the front door. He couldn't pick out Mrs. Walker's voice in the hallway anymore, but she hadn't yet returned - probably went off to her own apartment to tend to her kids after all. Jason pushed himself off from the table, traversing the small living room to the cabinet again. Next to the overturned family photo, a lone portrait of Catherine remained standing, her lovely smile before this life wore her down immortalised in all its 5R-sized glory. No matter the transgressions in this household, this was the mother Jason loved, and wanted to remember.

He left that night, with nothing but the portrait, his savings and the clothes on his back as he ventured into the infinite world beyond.

**Author's Note:**

> "DCF" is short for Department of Children and Families, which is the Jersey branch of CPS according to Google. Do let me know if I got that wrong though.
> 
> [Here's a visualiser](https://stvlti.tumblr.com/post/618004353950924800/this-is-my-blog-so-ill-dump-whatever-i-like) of the Todd family home I had in mind as I wrote this, if you're wondering about Jason's path through the apartment. It's meant to be cramped and tiny, and I don't know if that came across properly in this short scene.
> 
> And if you're curious, [here's a spoiler / sneak peek](https://stvlti.tumblr.com/post/615541399123886080/tentatodd-week-2020-day-4-mers-undersea) of where this story is gonna go, eventually.


End file.
